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“He left you,” Lukas says with a note of unsurprised coldness. “Damon left the city without you.”

“Yes. He had to. This demon he fights.” She keeps the sadness from her voice. He did leave her. He left her to the fate she had brought upon herself by marrying him.

“He left us both,” Lukas says with no emotion, not even anger.

“I am to be married to Atticul at the Ascension.”

“I wonder if it will be before or after my execution.” Lukas says it lightly, as if he is genuinely curious.

After that, Lukas spoke to her nightly. She never knew how he got the news, but when he told her, “Damon is coming back,” she felt a strange terror. Although, in her heart, she knew it to be inevitable.

“He will be killed.”

“When has that ever stopped him?” Lukas laughs. “My Lady, if Damon attacks the Ascension it will likely ignite a riot. There are many in the city who will be ready to exploit that and fan the flames higher. Including me. And, I think, you.”

“What do we do?”

“Once,” says Lukas, “Long ago, I told the Mortingales of a way to attack an Ascension. It is my hope that they are here in the city and ready to do so. But if they are doing as I told them, they will need help. They will need someone on the dais, who can open the door.”

Inez is well guarded on the dais, even when Atticul has spoken his vows to her, executed Vindar and moved to bring Lukas to the block.

Lukas had expected such. He had told her to wait until Damon attacked, that the confusion would be her best chance.

But when Damon had come racing across the temple floor, she had paused, just for a moment, seeing him. There were tears in her eyes. He seemed only one man alone. He was the One Man Army, but that name did not mean he could truly take on a temple full of guards, ready for unrest at the Ascension of an unpopular new Emperor.

Then had come the blast of magic and she found herself being dragged by Atticul and his guards towards a small archway. If there had been a chance for her to do as Lukas had bid, she had missed it.

She was close to the archway, almost through it when she thought she saw Damon hacking his way to her. Her heart lifted before she realised two things. This was not Damon, but the younger bastard son of Prince Rafus who looked so like him. Kerik. Kerik of Fanost ,who had long been thought dead and only recently, claimed by Atticul, to be alive. The second more devastating realisation was that he was too far away to reach her before she would be forced through the archway and out of the temple.

Then came the bird.

A giant white bird flew down from the balcony. It was only when that bird grasped Kerik and lifted him that Inez realised it was not a bird, but a winged man. A fae.

The fae and Kerik land before her. Kerik cuts down the bodyman holding her, Atticul vanishes through the doorway, seemingly from pure terror. For a small moment she is alone, standing in the middle of murderous chaos. Her heart beats hard.

She looks down at herself. Her beautiful gold wedding gown is torn across the left side of the skirt and she swoons into the arms of Kerik Darekul, Kerik of Fanost, the man who looks like Damon.

Only for a moment. When she opens her eyes, he is still there. He is looking down at her. His eyes glitter silver like Damon’s.

“Kerik?”

“At your service, my Lady,” Kerik says with a bow of his head as he sets Inez back onto her feet, before turning and smoothly killing a man behind him with a slice of his sword. A white blade that glows like a candle encased in ice.

The fae, whose wings seem to be melting away, says, “Lady Inez, my name is Perl. We are here with Damon. We will take you from this place and into his charge.”

Inez looks up at the wide dais. She shakes her head. “No, no, there is something I must do.”

The man and the fae look at each other, “My Lady?” says Perl.

“Lukas. Lukas Darekul, he gave me a task. But there was no chance to do it before… I was meant to do it when Damon attacked. Before his head was taken.”

“His head has not been taken,” says Kerik. “What do you need to do?”

Inez points at the dais, at the jewelled panel. “I need to open that.”

“Is it an escape route?” says Perl.

“Better.”